Parasniper
by Soul Reaver
Summary: GI Joe recruits a sniper with a haunted past from the 82nd Airborne Division into its ranks...


Parasniper  
  
Disclaimer: I own neither the Resident Evil or GI Joe characters in this fanfic. I'm not really following the comic book or the cartoon to the letter with this fanfic. The two Joes Godsmack and Parasniper are my creation.  
  
~ ~ ~ ~  
  
September 25, 1998: Specialist Victor Garibaldi, 82nd Airborne Division, US Army peered from his concealed hide atop a hill overlooking a small and modern suburban neighborhood through his field glasses. In the cramped hide concealing himself and two other members of his sniper team, Sergeant Rick Finns and Private First Class Marvin Reilly, Garibaldi daydreamed about the suburban neighborhood below him. Water Oak Vale, the development in which he had spent most of his childhood and all of his adolescence lay in its infinite beauty below him.  
  
Garibaldi was a classic small town boy, graduating from high school two years ago with a 3.89 GPA, an average athletic record at the Raccoon City Gymnasium as a light weight boxer, and a good legal record. Some mutant genes made him want to enlist in the Army and become a paratrooper and hopefully a Ranger instead of going on to college as a lot of his friends had done. He still would read the Raccoon Times online in his small apartment even though he was all the way in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  
  
Using both the lens of his telescopic sight or those of his field glasses he was able to look at his home town which he dearly missed and hoped to return to after spending a long time in the army of course. His unit being on field exercises in the Arklay Mountains, this close to Raccoon was a great stroke of luck. His observation hide being located just on the outskirts of town was an even greater one.  
  
Already he could see the Radero family taking their kids to school. Thirteen year old Marco and his little sister Inez were being driven to school by their father, Enrique, who had introduced Garibaldi's father to the city of Raccoon where both men worked as engineers for a civil engineering firm that had a big contract with Umbrella Company. It was a mild autumn, the leaves were still green and it would be light jacket weather at the coldest. Garibaldi grinned, a set of white teeth against a camouflaged face.  
  
He could see his other next door neighbor, Tara, getting into her car, a 1998 Honda Civic, and getting ready to go to class at the local college. He watched as the slim, dark haired, and dark eyed young woman started off to school. He had known her since he had moved into Raccoon at the age of six and both of them were babysat by Mrs. Radero as children. She was his best friend throughout his childhood and as he entered adolescence he began feeling something a little deeper, something he didn't fully realize until his senior year of high school at their senior prom. But then their paths diverged, Tara was going to college to study journalism and Victor was going into the Army.  
  
He also swung the field glasses towards his house, a good sized and comfortable single story suburban brick house where his father was driving off to work and his mother had already left. That left his grandmother and his two brothers, Michael and David who were 13 and 11 respectively, both of them going to the same tiny Catholic school just outside of town that Marco and Inez went to and where Garibaldi had attended school with Tara when they were grade and middle schoolers.  
  
With the exception of those horrible murders Raccoon City was like a secret paradise nestled in a hidden valley. He noticed that Inez and Marco were no longer dropped off at the bus stop with Michael and David; instead they were being brought directly to school because of fear of those cannibal murderers. Through his telescopic sight, Victor had seen a couple suspicious looking people shambling about a clearing near the outskirts of Victory Park; a well kept Gulf War memorial created by Mr. Kendrick, a co- worker of his father's to commemorate two Raccoon City men that had died during operation Desert Storm back in 1991.  
  
Right about now, Grandma was cleaning up the kitchen and getting ready to cook lunch for his mother and herself and a snack for his brothers when they got back from school. Tara would stop by occasionally if she had a break from classes, and she usually did for a bite to eat as well. He could see Mr. Catanzaro, Tara's father, watering his tomatoes out front when several of those shambling figures approached.  
  
"Holy shit!" Garibaldi shouted, he saw several of those suspicious, shambling figures knock Mr. Catanzaro down and start eating him. Through their telescopic sights, the three man sniper team could see Mr. Catanzaro being eaten alive, his intestines slipping through massive injuries to his guts like fat blue snakes.  
  
"This is Bravo 410, we have a visual on unidentified cannibal murderers." PFC Reilly said through his radio while aiming his telescope sighted CAR-15 with Sergeant Finns on his M24.  
  
"This is Charlie 10, that's an affirmative, open fire."1st Lieutenant Reuben replied over the radio, over the radio Garibaldi could here gunfire, "We're being engaged up and down our perimeter by these things fire at will."  
  
Garibaldi needed no further encouragement, he sighted on the nearest zombie, closing for his house and squeezed off a round. Finns followed with a shot of his own a few seconds later. Reilly was firing single rounds at first but then started squeezing off 3 round bursts as the mob thickened.  
  
~ ~ ~ ~  
  
Maria Garibaldi heard a sound that frightened her more than the specter of cannibal murderers, gunfire. There was no mystery to this, the old woman was a teenager living in Salerno, Sicily during World War II. She saw several men, shambling as though drunk, towards the house, battering away at the door. She heard more gun fire, and saw several of them fall bleeding. She could see Mr. Catanzaro's corpse in his front lawn and she heard the garage door open and saw Catanzaro's daughter, Tara run out, "Mrs. Garibaldi! Get in the car! I'm taking us to the police station!"  
  
"My daughter?" Maria asked.  
  
"She's at the police station right now, she sent me to get you because I was closer, c'mon!" Tara shouted, getting both of them into the car.  
  
~ ~ ~ ~  
  
Garibaldi watched as Tara's car outdistanced the shambling things and sped off to the police station. With any luck, Tara and his Grandmother were safe. His mother hadn't come home yet and he hoped the Raccoon Police Department, which he was going to join after the Army, had evacuated the school.  
  
He and the Sergeant Finns kept engaging the creatures with their telescopic rifles with Reilly on the spotter scope since his rifle was out of range. "Damn, they're moving on." Finns said, the cluster of houses concealed several of them from the telescopic rifles of the hidden snipers.  
  
'Hold on you guys, hold on." Garibaldi prayed earnestly in his mind, kissing a tiny pewter medallion of the Virgin Mary on his dog tags. He had no way of knowing of the nightmare he was to visit.  
  
~ ~ ~ ~  
  
September 25, 2003: Sergeant Victor Garibaldi walked through the corridors of the barracks. The new unit he had joined wasn't like any unit he had ever seen in his life. First of all they were from many different services, there were SEALs, Delta Force, Marines, even ninjas on this base. That and weird nicknames like Dusty, Flint, Duke. This sounded like some cheesy 70s flick rather than a military outfit.  
  
He was still wearing fairly dusty tan desert fatigues and his floppy full brimmed desert hat from his service in Afghanistan. He had also been on a long flight stateside so he wasn't exactly fresh as a daisy.  
  
"Marines can beat the SEALs any day of the week and you know it!" came a shout.  
  
"Not true! We can kick your butts every day of the week!"  
  
He saw two fellows walking by, one in woodland cammies the other in a gray wet suit, "Let's ask this new guy, what's the best unit in the military?"  
  
"The 82nd Airborne Division." Garibaldi said with a slow, tired grin.  
  
Both of them gaped at the newcomer and shouted in unison, "The 82nd Airborne Division!!!!???"  
  
"Leatherneck and Wetsuit agreeing on something." a female voice replied.  
  
Garibaldi turned around and saw a woman with short brown hair and a blue- gray fatigue uniform walk by. "Who are those clowns?" he asked, incredulously.  
  
"Clowns?" both of them replied, "Clowns!?"  
  
"That's Leatherneck and Wetsuit they're the GI Joe debate team." the woman said, "Have they assigned you a codename yet?"  
  
"No." Garibaldi asked, he had been meaning to ask what the hell this codename thing was all about but he knew better than to ask just yet.  
  
Noticing his sleeve patch she asked, "What did you do in the 82nd Airborne?"  
  
"I was a sniper." Garibaldi replied.  
  
"Perfect. How about Parasniper?" Lady Jaye said.  
  
"Begging your pardon?" Garibaldi said.  
  
"We all have nicknames here, Leatherneck and Wetsuit you obviously have met, mine's Lady Jaye. From what I know about you, Parasniper sounds good unless you have any ideas."  
  
"Nope." Garibaldi replied, he knew better than to question a nickname, anyway Parasniper sounded pretty cool.  
  
"Now I wonder where your partner wandered off to." Lady Jaye replied. A medium built Hispanic man, about three inches shorter than Garibaldi wearing fatigue trousers and a black Godsmack t-shirt walked into the briefing room  
  
"This is our other new recruit, Corporal Dominic "Godsmack" Rossalvo." Lady Jaye replied.  
  
"Less than an hour here and you've already made up a new uniform?" Garibaldi asked.  
  
"Dude, we need to have you make up a better one." Rossalvo joked, he was a jovial little fellow where Garibaldi was reserved and retiring.  
  
"I'm proud to be a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, thank you very much." Garibaldi joked.  
  
"You're Airborne?" Dominic asked, "I was with the 101st Air Assault before they sent me off to GI Joe."  
  
"So what's with this new unit? I've heard we're a counter terrorist unit but that's all I know." Garibaldi asked.  
  
"We're not just a counter terrorist unit." A voice answered, a man in camouflage utilities and a black beret with a warrant officer's device.  
  
"Group atten-hut!" Garibaldi called as both men stood and saluted.  
  
"At ease." Flint replied, "I know you gentlemen are wondering what is it exactly that GI Joe does. You may have heard about it through members of your units. Now we're going to break you in like any unit does with new recruits, but we're not going to send you through Basic again. You're in because we already know you're good soldiers. Prove me wrong and you'll be returned to your units. You'll be probationary unit members for the next six months. You'll be receiving additional training for your specialties. The reason we expect so much out of you is because you are facing an enemy that is more ruthless than any we have yet encountered."  
  
Flint turned off the lights and began a power point presentation. The first slide showed a man in a blue uniform and mask, "This is COBRA Commander, the head of the terrorist organization called COBRA which GI Joe was created to counteract."  
  
The next few slides showed images of destruction, the last few were particularly gruesome for they showed pictures of young people, several of them barely teenagers in various states of disarray. "These last few slides are the work of Dr. Mindbender, their top scientist. He has an unhealthy fascination with playing with people's DNA."  
  
The next slide showed a girl, maybe twelve years old at the eldest, her face looked misshapen, lumps and protuberances extended from her face and his skin looked pale and translucent, her eyes were bloodshot and her face conveyed an expression of extreme agony. Parasniper looked unshaken but Godsmack looked like he was ready to vomit.  
  
"Make no mistake gentlemen, as members of this unit you are the frontline defense against this foe. This concludes my speech, welcome to GI Joe."  
  
~ ~ ~ ~  
  
A few hours later both men were settled in their room. "You play?" Godsmack said, putting out a chessboard.  
  
"Yeah." Parasniper grinned faintly as he put up a picture. It was a picture of the young Victor Garibaldi before he enlisted in the Army. A young idealistic lad with short cropped hair, a gray Army PT t-shirt and a broad smile stood beside his friends and family in front of a house in a town that no longer existed. "Your family?" Godsmack asked.  
  
"Yeah." Parasniper replied and took a bishop off the board, "Your move."  
  
"What? Oh man." Godsmack replied, "What kind of loco bastard would do this kind of shit?"  
  
"You mean all that human experimentation stuff?" Parasniper asked, "Too many would, unfortunately. Raccoon City, 1998."  
  
"You mean those people that went crazy because of that chemical spill." Godsmack replied.  
  
"Not crazy, my friend, they literally lost any humanity they might have had. They became the walking dead, cannibalistic, feeding on their fellow man." Parasniper replied, "A beautiful little town, a secret paradise in the Arklay Mountains. All of it was gone in less than a week because of just such experimentation."  
  
"You were there?" Godsmack asked.  
  
"Yes. However I was more than just there, Raccoon City was my home. So for nearly five days I watched from hiding as all that I knew and loved was destroyed around me." Parasniper replied, a hard edge coming into his voice, "So you see the results of human greed creating someone like this COBRA Commander."  
  
Godsmack was speechless, his new partner had seen everything that he had once known destroyed in the blink of an eye, wiped from the earth like excrement from a boot. "Your move." Parasniper added. 


End file.
